(f)route music: Padma and Susannah give fruit the lute

Internationally famous musician Padma Newsome and his partner dancer and choreographer Susannah Keebler from Mallacoota, talk about their involvement in the East Gippsland (f)route movement and perform the first (f)route composition.

Where do you live in East Gippsland? Describe your regional life/ world? Mallacoota

What is your favourite place in East Gippsland? Mallacoota

Do you have a fruit ritual? What is your favourite fruit to eat and how do you like to eat it?

Susannah: I’m a savoury and sour person. My favourite fruit is the tomatillo, which originates from Mexico. The name means “little tomato” in Spanish, but it’s almost citrusy. Anything can become ritualistic for me (I’m a dancer after all), but when I grew tomatillos because I couldn’t get them here in Australia, I felt like I was connecting to a food culture from where I grew up that I missed.

In order to prepare them, you must peel away the dry husk. They are then quite sticky. You rinse off any dirt, but you don’t rinse so much that all the stickiness comes off... it hold some of the tomatillo’s essential flavour. My favourite use of the tomatillos is salsa verde (green salsa) which is made by roasting and blackening the tomatillos as well as onion and chille. Hot and spicy and the flavour of summer for me.

Padma:Red Grapefruit, cut in half, each segment sliced individually from the pith, and once around the circumference. Placed in a bowl just barely bigger. Ideally the lip of the grapefruit extends just marginally over the edge of the bowl. Liberally sprinkle sugar over the entire cut surface of the grapefruit. Leave for at least a half hour. Eat with a teaspoon, and hardly ever with a specially designed grapefruit knife.P.S. There will be juice to drink from the bowl after the grapefruit is removed. I also drink directly from the grapefruit any remaining juice

This could well be some kind father envy food, since I used to watch him eat his carefully prepared grapefruit, in those days only yellow, Canberra is just a country town, with a sprinkle of sugar, we never got sugar. It would be cut early and the sugar on top would gradually work its way into the juice. The crust of the sugar would harden slightly. He also had sugar on his porridge. Porridge, smorridge.

Other greatest fruit.

Giant Passion Fruit in Rio, Pink Guava in Suva, Lychees in Suva, large sticks poking down Avocado’s in the backyard, are nuts fruits?, if so then, Macadamia cracking at the Mott St House, Enoggera, Qld. Lady Fingers were also a speciality of the house, amongst sweet ripe pawpaw, Passion Fruit. Bags full of Mulberries at Geelong Grammar in a summer music camp, 1974.

Last funny fruit story.

Young Jim, who is still ignorant of treachery, astonished when I taught to pee in the bush. “Really” he says to me, wide eyed, thinking I am playing a trick on him. Finally some fussing later, I also introduce him to a pale, out of season berry from the Exocarpis cupressiformis, Cherry Ballart in common parlance, though not that common. “Really” he says, thinking yet another trick. The wide eyed look on his face however when he put the fruit in his mouth. hmmmm.

What is your connection to the (f)route project? How are you involved?We participated in the Mallacoota Sea Orchard and (F)route and has been to a (f)route breakfast in Orbost.Now we are building a (f)route cart the tells about our personal (f)route to Mallacoota in music, poems, and dance.

The (f)route movement brings together ideas of community, art, agriculture, tourism and sustainability- uniting themes for East Gippslanders. Discuss why the ethos of the (f)route project is important to modern world? (F)route is making light of and creating culture which makes no distinctions between food, art, history, environment, and the people who make them. I think the ethos of (F)route that I've observed is generosity, togetherness, industriousness, creativity, and pleasure, which are important values that can counter balance modern cultures of stress, hastiness, violence, isolation, and pain.

The East Gippsland (f)route movement meets again from 9.30am, Saturday 2nd March, 2013 for (f)routeville: a bigger than usual (f)route breakfast, Nicholson River Winery